HOW NEGATIVE EXPECTANCIES AND ATTITUDES UNDERMINE FEMALES' MATH CONFIDENCE AND PERFORMANCE: A Review of the Literature

by
Dr. Jennifer Gutbezahl

"When a woman becomes a scholar, there is usually
something wrong with her sexual organs."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Math is hard."
-- Teen Talk Barbie(TM)

There is a common belief that females are less mathematically
capable than males. This belief is fairly constant across populations (see
e.g. Eccles, 1987). Classroom studies have shown that this belief is in
place by the time children enter the third grade (Crawford, Herrmann,
Holdsworth, Randall & Robbins, 1989). This belief is mirrored by
students' parents. By the time children enter kindergarten, parents
expect girls to do better at verbal tasks and boys to do better at math
(Lummis & Stevenson, 1990). This belief continues through elementary
school (Entwistle & Baker, 1983) and on throughout the academic process
(Hyde & Linn, 1988; Yee & Eccles, 1988).

This belief is not entirely unfounded. Although evidence from the
many studies performed on gender differences in mathematics is
inconsistent, small but statistically significant differences are the norm
(see Feingold, 1988; Hyde, Fennema & Lamon, 1990; Lubinski & Benbow,
1992; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974 for some reviews of the literature). These
between-gender differences are generally quite small compared to
variability within each gender. Furthermore, these differences are
becoming smaller over time (Linn & Hyde, 1989). There are no significant
differences between boys' and girls' math achievement in elementary
school, and few differences at any age (Feingold, 1988; NAEP, 1983;
Shipman, Krantz & Silver, 1992). Although these differences are small,
parents and teachers often expect large discrepancies between boys'
and girls' performance in math class. Because others' expectations can
have a strong influence on one's attitudes (Tocci & Engelhard, 1991;
Triandis, 1971; Zimbardo & Ebbersen, 1970) and behavior (Snyder, 1979;
Snyder & Swann, 1978), parents' and teachers' negative expectations put
girls at a distinct disadvantage in the classroom.

What Parents and Teachers Expect of Girls

When Benbow and Stanley (1980) found that boys performed better
than girls on the quantative portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the
mainstream press immediately reported the results. These reports
included the assertion that, because the experimenters had controlled
for the number of classes each student had taken, the difference must
have some biological basis. For example, Newsweek (December 15, 1980)
carried the headline "Do Males Have a Math Gene?" and gave the answer
as yes (reported in Hyde, Fennema, Ryan, Frost & Hopp, 1990). The study
had some serious flaws. The investigators had not collected any
biological data, but claimed that environmental factors could not have
affected the students' performance because boys and girls had taken the
same number of math classes. Unfortunately, by the time critics pointed
out that even in the same classroom, boys and girls may have very
different experiences (Eccles, 1983; Eccles & Wegfield, 1985), the
mainstream press had moved onto other stories. This study reinforced
the stereotype of girls as people who are simply unable to do math.

Parent Expectations

Girls whose parents were familiar with the Benbow and Stanley
studies did significantly worse in math than girls whose parents were
unfamiliar with the studies (Eccles & Jacobs, 1986). Even parents
unfamiliar with this study tend to rate daughters as less mathematically
able than sons, even if these daughters and sons are performing at the
same level. Many parents accept their sons' mathematical successes as
evidence of innate ability, while they think of their daughters' successes
as hard work compensating for innate lack of ability. (Eccles, 1989; Yee &
Eccles, 1988). Children whose parents attribute success to effort have
lower self-esteem than children whose parents attribute success to
ability (Eccles-Parsons, Adler & Kaczala, 1982).

Parents treat boys and girls differently from birth. They are more
physically active with boys than with girls (Huston, 1983; Lewis, 1972;
Parke, 1976) and give boys more spatially complex toys and more
opportunities to explore their physical worlds (Baennenger & Newcombe,
1989; Miller, 1987; Serbin & Conner, 1979). These differences may
contribute to the well-documented gender differences in spatial ability
(see Baennenger & Newcombe, 1989; and Halpern, 1992 for reviews).
Spatial ability is an important component of math skills and facilitates
comprehension of abstract mathematical concepts used in geometry,
trigonometry and calculus.

Parents may allow boys more chances for active interaction with
the physical world, but they talk more to girls (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974;
Unger & Crawford, 1992). Interestingly, experimenters talk more to
animals they believe to be dull than to those they believe to be bright,
although they handle the dull animals less. Thus, these supposedly dull
animals get verbal but not physical stimulation from the experimenter.
These animals do not learn as quickly as animals alleged to be bright,
even when there are not actual differences between the two groups.
(Rosenthal & Fode, 1963; Rosenthal & Lawson, 1964).

Teacher Expectations

Teachers' expectations can have a direct influence on students'
grades, with students who are expected to do well consistently
outperforming those who are expected to do poorly (Feldman & Theiss,
1982; Good & Brophy, 1987; Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). Teachers expect
less academically from girls than from boys and treat girls quite
differently from the way boys are treated. Boys are praised for their
ability when they do well, and criticized for not working harder when
they don't. Girls are complimented on their hard work and neat
performance when they succeed in math; they are told they are not
bright when they fail (Dweck, 1986; Dweck, Davidson, Nelson & Enna,
1978; Stockard, 1980). Boys also are attended to by teachers more than
girls are, receive more help from teachers on areas in which they have
problems academically, and are called on more often to give answers in
class (Becker, 1981; Epperson, 1988; Fennema & Reyes, 1981; Koehler,
1990; Simpson & Erikson, 1983).

In schools which group students by ability, girls are significantly
less likely to be put in high-ability groups than are boys of equal
ability, and are significantly more likely to be misassigned than boys
(Hallinan & Sorenson, 1987). Even in the same classroom, the questions
asked of girls tend to be at a lower cognitive level than the more
conceptual questions asked of boys (Clewell, Anderson & Thorpe, 1992;
Fennema & Reyes, 1981; Good, Sikes & Brophy, 1973). These lower-level
questions do not provide the opportunity to apply basic math skills to
higher-order concepts (Coles & Griffen, 1987). Students who have the
opportunity to apply skills to higher order concepts themselves (as
opposed to simply seeing teachers or peers go through the process)
perform better mathematically (Fennema & Peterson, 1985; Koehler, 1990;
Webb & Kenderski, 1985).

Thus both parents and teachers expect girls to do poorly in
mathematics. Their failures are accepted as a necessary shortcoming of
being female, and their successes are discounted. Not surprisingly,
girls come to have lower confidence in their mathematical ability than
boys have (see Chipman & Wilson, 1985 for a review).

This lack of confidence is devastating for several reasons. If girls
believe that they are incapable of performing well in math class, they
may experience a sense of helplessness in the classroom (Covington &
Beery, 1976; Dweck & Repucci, 1973; Kloosterman, 1988). Girls who have
little faith in their own ability tend to attribute success in math class to
external causes, such as luck, or to situational causes, such as effort
(Eccles-Parsons, Adler & Kaczala, 1982; Ryckman & Peckham, 1987). It
isn't simply a matter of girls having lower overall self-esteem than boys.
Girls are as likely as boys to attribute success in areas other than
mathematics to their ability (Ryckman & Peckham, 1987). However, for
many girls, these attributions to ability don't seem applicable to their
successes in math class. This gives female students little reason to
believe that the next mathematical dilemma they encounter will be
overcome.

This lack of confidence may be part of the reason girls take fewer
math courses than boys, a pattern that begins in high school and
continues throughout college (Chipman & Thomas, 1985; McDade, 1988;
Wilson & Boldizar, 1990). The more confident students are of their ability
to do well in mathematics, the more likely they are to continue with
higher level courses (Hackett, 1985; Lantz & Smith, 1981; Meece, Eccles,
Futterman, Goff & Kaczala, 1982). As a matter of fact, the decision to
enroll in math courses beyond the minimum required for graduation is
more highly correlated with perceived ability than with actual ability
(Eccles, 1983). The more success in mathematics is attributed to ability
(rather than to effort or luck), the more likely students are to persist in
their studies (Pedro, Wolleat, Fennema & Becker, 1981).

Why Girls See Themselves as Mathematically Inferior

Carol Dweck (1986) has offered an explanation as to why girls may
be more susceptible to these effort attributions, and more likely to be
affected negatively by them, than boys. According to Dweck, girls are
more likely to hold an entity theory of intelligence: they believe that
intelligence in a given domain is something a person either has or
doesn't have. Boys are more likely to hold an incremental theory of
intelligence: they believe that intelligence in a given domain may be
increased by hard work.

These entity and incremental theories can apply to any type of
intelligence. However, in our society, math ability is often viewed as
something you either have or you don't (Tobias, 1978). As noted earlier,
many parents and teachers count girls among those who don't have it.
This may be why, although there are some differences between boys' and
girls' intelligence theories in other subject areas, they are far more
pronounced in the mathematical domain (Eccles-Parsons, et al., 1982;
Gitelson, Peterson & Tobin-Richards, 1982; Ryckman & Peckham, 1987).

Boys and girls come to hold different beliefs as a result of
differential treatment in the classroom. Boys are given more feedback as
to the quality of their work, more chances to generate correct answers
and more encouragement to persist on problems that they initially get
wrong. Girls, on the other hand, have their incorrect answers attributed
to poor ability and are not encouraged to continue working to get the
correct answer (Golombok & Fivush, 1994; Good & Brophy, 1987;
Rosenthal, 1973; Stockard, 1980). Negative feedback given to boys often
focuses on their poor behavior or lack of effort, while negative feedback
given to girls often focuses on their intellectual shortcomings (Dweck, et
al., 1978).

With this type of feedback it is not surprising that girls learn to
attribute their failures to lack of ability and boys learn to attribute
theirs to lack of effort. Because moving from subject to subject in
mathematics (e.g. moving from arithmetic to algebra to trigonometry to
calculus) often involves learning entirely new concepts, it is unlikely
that students will understand new subjects completely when they are
first presented. Girls, who are more likely to hold an entity theory, may
attribute this lack of immediate comprehension to inability and assume
that math is simply too difficult for them. So they stop trying. Boys,
who are more likely to hold an incremental theory, may attribute failure
to lack of effort and work harder. This hard work is necessary for
success in mathematics.

Because girls may assume that math is going to be difficult, they
may have trouble distinguishing between work that will yield results and
work that will not. Students who cannot gauge when tasks should be
abandoned are at a disadvantage (Janoff-Bulman & Brickman, 1981).
These students not only give up too soon when they are capable of
solving a problem, but they persist in inappropriate strategies when
there is little hope of a solution. This leads to frustration and is taken as
further evidence of low ability.

The tendency of girls to hold an entity theory about math packs a
double whammy when combined with the belief that they are incapable of
performing well. This cognitive combination affects female students
negatively in many ways. First, females have a higher level of math
anxiety (Fennema & Sherman, 1976; Tobias, 1978). Second, females are
vulnerable to the stereotype that "girls just can't do math" which leads
to increased frustration and decreased performance in the face of
difficult math problems (Spencer & Steele, 1994). Third, females' belief
that their ability is so low that no amount of work will compensate may
drain their willingness to persist (Bandura, 1978). Finally, if female
students believe that they will fail no matter how much effort they
expend they may self-handicap by withholding effort (Arkin &
Baumgardner, 1985; Berglas, 1985).

Math Anxiety

Several reviews have concluded that there are significant gender
differences in math anxiety (Fox, 1977; Meyer & Fennema, 1988; Meyer &
Koehler, 1990; Reyes, 1984, but see Hyde, et al., 1990). Eysenck (1992)
has argued that one of the key purposes of anxiety is to facilitate the
early detection of signs of threat or potential danger. Anxious people
process information in a highly selective way: they attend to the most
threatening elements of the information presented (Eysenck, MacLeod &
Mathews, 1987; Mogg, Mathews & Weinman, 1989; Richards & French,
1990). This selective attention may cause math-anxious students to focus
on irrelevant parts of a math problem. This drains cognitive resources
and lessens performance (Ashcraft & Faust, 1994; Dew, Galassi & Galassi,
1984; Eysenck & Calvo, 1992; Tobias, 1978).

Stereotype Vulnerability

High-performing females seem to be particularly vulnerable to the
stereotype that "girls just can't do math." Women who continue in
mathematics perform just as well as their male peers throughout high
school. However, when these same women go on to high level courses
such as calculus and analytic geometry they fare less well than men who
have shown equal promise up to that point (Fennema & Sherman, 1978;
Kimball, 1989; Spencer & Steele, 1994). This does not seem to be due to
lack of persistence, because females work just as long on hard math
problems as males do (Spencer & Steele, 1994), but for men this hard
work pays off, while for women it does not.

Steven Spencer and Claude Steele (1994) suggest that when female
students are frustrated by the difficulty of math problems, they
associate this frustration with the belief that they as women are not
supposed to be able to do math. This leads to anxiety, which impairs
performance. To test this hypothesis. Spencer and Steele (1994)
performed a number of experiments utilizing males and females who were
highly skilled at mathematics and highly motivated to perform well. As
was predicted, females scored as well as males on a test of moderate
difficulty, but underperformed relative to males when the test was more
difficult. This is in keeping with earlier findings.

This same difficult test was given to another group of students
with one minor change in the procedure: some students were told that
the test was gender-fair (i.e. females performed as well as males on the
test), while others were told that the test differentiated between males
and females. When females believed that they could do as well on the test
as males, they did so. There were no significant differences between
males' and females' performance in this condition. Females who expected
the test to be difficult for females showed the usual pattern of
underperforming relative to males.

Lowered Persistence

Many girls both hold an entity theory of intelligence and harbor
doubts about their own ability. When these girls do well in math, they
attribute this success to effort in the face of low ability and see no
reason to persist as the difficulty of the material increases beyond what
they believe to be their limits. When these same girls do poorly in math,
they attribute their failure to low ability, conclude that increased effort
will yield little in the way of results, and so see no reason to persist on
material they consider too hard for them.

Albert Bandura's (1977) persistence hypothesis states that self-
efficacy (the sense that one has the ability to do well at a task) is
positively related to persistence. Students who persist at a mathematics
problem in the face of obstacles and frustration are more likely to arrive
at the correct answers than those who throw up their hands in despair.
Indeed, research has shown that self-efficacy is positively related to
both persistence and performance in mathematics. (Brown, Lent &
Larkin, 1989; Hackett & Betz, 1981; Multon, Brown & Lent, 1991; Schunk,
1987).

Self-Handicapping

Because lack of ability is a stable cause of failure that cannot be
overcome, students who believe their ability to be low withhold effort
rather than risk failing and confirming their low opinion of their ability.
After all, doing poorly in a class which one "blows off" all semester is to be
expected, but making a sincere effort and failing anyway can be
devastating to the ego (Arkin & Baumgardner, 1985; Berglas, 1985).

If girls are more likely than boys to attribute success to external
causes and to attribute failure to internal causes, then they would be
expected to feel less pride in their success and more shame in response
to failure (Stipek & Gralinski, 1991; Weiner, 1986). Success is not
particularly rewarding for students who do not attribute this success to
ability. Even if these students expect to and do perform well in certain
classes, they attribute this success to luck, the low level of difficulty of
the class, or leniency on the part of the teacher (Tapasak, 1990).
Students who believe that they will receive a good grade in a particular
class, but who do not believe that they are capable of learning and
understanding the concepts in the class, are not strongly motivated to
persist in their work in that class. Nor does their confidence increase as
a result of their high grade (Lent, Lopez & Bieschke, 1991; Siegel, Galassi
& Ware, 1985; Wheeler, K. G., 1983).

If expectations of future successes are low, or if these successes
are discounted, students will withhold effort and will avoid contact with
the subject in the future (Weiner, 1986). The decision to continue in
mathematics is crucial to a student's continued success, both
academically and professionally. The small differences found between
boys' and girls' math performance nearly disappear when the students
have taken the same courses (Chipman & Wilson, 1985; Lent, Brown &
Larkin, 1984; but see Benbow & Stanley, 1980). Many college majors and
fields of graduate study are closed to students who have not taken the
requisite math courses (Fennema, 1990; Wise, 1985).

Summary and Conclusions

What we have then, is a circle of expectancies and fulfillment of
these expectancies. Society as a whole believes that females are less
mathematically capable than men. This belief is communicated to parents
and teachers, who pass it along to students. Girls come to view their
failures in math as evidence that they are indeed inferior and to view
their successes as flukes. This reinforces the belief that they are not
capable of doing well in math. Females stop taking advanced math
courses in high school or college, believing them too difficult. Girls fail
to acquire the knowledge necessary to achieve in mathematics. In the
end, the expectancies of their parents and teachers are fulfilled, and
society has further "proof" of females' inferior math ability.

What is most surprising about this whole cycle is that females
perform as well as they do. Differences between males' and females'
performance is quite small compared to the stereotypes that many people
hold. And these differences are getting smaller over time (Hyde & Linn,
1988). This bodes well for the future. As these differences decrease,
parents and teachers will see more and more that females are capable of
performing well in mathematics. This will lead to more parental and
academic support, further enhancing females' ability. In this way, the
cycle may be broken.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This article was completed as part of the requirements for a Master of
Science degree in Social Psychology at the University of
Massachusetts. Correspondence concerning this article may be sent to
Jennifer Gutbezahl, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01002.
Electronic mail may be sent to jennyg@twain.oit.umass.edu or to
jennyg@fix.org.

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